


Siege Reveries

by Vana



Category: A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin, Game of Thrones (TV)
Genre: Alcohol, Bathing/Washing, Drinking, Feeding Kink, M/M, Siege of Storm's End, Teenage Fantasies, reading kink
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2014-07-14
Updated: 2017-09-12
Packaged: 2018-02-08 21:51:18
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 2,911
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1957383
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Vana/pseuds/Vana
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Just after the siege, Stannis can't stop thinking about food and the smuggler who brought it.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Melting

**Author's Note:**

> This was part of a challenge put on by one of my dearest friends, [cocking_about](http://archiveofourown.org/users/cocking_about/pseuds/cocking_about), who isn't even in this fandom but held a writing thing a few months ago. I didn't like this then, but -- as it usually happens because I have no shame -- I like it more when I read it later. And it was inspired, like so many of my stories are, by an idea from [ididntcomeheretoeatfruit](http://ididntcomeheretoeatfruit.tumblr.com). This is the first in an occasional series.

Stannis had never loved sweets as Renly had loved them: Renly as a baby, pulling at the elbows of his family while they ate, trying to dislodge a bit of pastry or a morsel of fruit from their fork or fingers. Stannis was the only one he never begged food from, because Stannis never ate anything that was interesting to a child. And Robert enjoyed honey in cakes, in ale, in mead and glazing the rich meats he glutted himself on. Stannis alone had never cared for sugar. Now he wondered, as the world wavered with hunger before him, what he would wish if he could choose anything to eat.   
  
Would it be a flank of boar, such as Robert likely feasted on during the months when Stannis held his castle through starvation? Would it be a light cake, flecked with spices and iced with cream, one Renly would covet? Would it be … anything but another onion, and yet that is what Stannis had. His stomach twisted thinking of it. A fresh berry, maybe, dipped in honey: and as he stared into the distance his fogged mind conjured up Davos, the smuggler of the food that had saved them all, sitting pleasingly close to him as they supped at ease in a quiet place with the summer breezes blowing gently in from an open window. Lowborn as he was, Davos would be welcome to share Stannis' table as well as a plate of sausage or creamed peas or raspberries, or better yet the tart cloudberries that grew in the Riverlands. His mouth watered thinking of the taste, of letting himself be fed — and of Davos, perhaps bringing the berry to his mouth, and of the honey dripping off Davos’ fingers.   
  
Stannis would taste one of those fingers, letting the honey's subtle sweetness linger on his tongue and savoring the way it mingled with the salt of Davos’ skin: the coolness of the berry smooth against his lips and popping open cold under his teeth, warmed by Davos’ finger and then by his mouth, hot against Stannis’, sudden and gentle and needful. He saw how Robert kissed maidens with his mouth open and tongue out and it had made him want to be ill, but now he thought of kissing Davos that way and how he knew the older man would guide him, would teach him everything about the sweetness of a willing tongue and the warmth of a droplet of honey.   
  
And Davos would drip it down Stannis’ chest, their hunger now at once forgotten and increased; Stannis could almost feel the tickle of the thick liquid. Davos would follow with his mouth, lips teasing against the skin and the stickiness, and Stannis could feel himself pressing both hands down hard on the smuggler's shoulders as Davos tasted every last inch of his chest and stomach, and he could not hold in a tiny whimper of want.   
  
The sound echoed in the dusty room and jerked him back into himself. Stannis was left reeling from the shock of it, from the force of the vision that had assailed him, leaving him flushed and trembling, breathing hard in the empty air. Surely Davos was not far away. Surely he would come if his new lord commanded it. But there were no berries, and there was no honey, and Stannis would not know how to begin to ask for what he wanted. He sighed and took up another fork's full of boiled onion.


	2. Steam

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The siege is lifted and the men are finally able to focus on something other than starving and eating. In the bath house below Storm's End, Stannis catches a glimpse of Davos in the water.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Written for [shadowsfan](http://archiveofourown.org/users/shadowsfan/pseuds/shadowsfan). Merry Christmas!

Stannis had seen the bathhouse at the Red Keep, and had heard tell of even grander ones at Harrenhal, built to be the largest castle in Westeros despite its state of decay. The cellar where the men bathed at Storm’s End was shabby and thin-walled, but then what — or who — was not after the starvation they had all just endured? And only onions to save them, Stannis mused, his thoughts returning again and again to the siege and the daring smuggler who had brought life back to the castle.

The young lord idly scrubbed at his knees and winced when the rag caught on a rough patch of skin. How long had he crawled, falling starved and weakened on the splintered floor before Maester Cressen had helped him back up? How long would it have taken him to die there?

The fire of the bathhouse burned — low indeed, but now it did burn — and in the dull red glow Stannis saw the shadows of his liege lords, the men who had survived with him. All were slumped and emaciated — all but one, whose shoulders stood out strong over his broad chest and whose close-cropped brown beard could not hide his grin as he japed with another sailor. Davos, the onion smuggler, was there before him, just out of reach, naked as his name day with his wet skin glowing against the embers. 

Stannis sank down into the water again, breathing hard, with a falling feeling in his chest like when he had slipped on the boards just before coming to meet Davos’ black sailboat. And it was worse than that — he had hardened on the instant, the second he had caught sight of the smuggler clad only in firelight — and now, watching and safely out of view, his manhood throbbed even under the warm water. 

Davos was stooping to lather his shins and feet with a palmful of sooty lye soap; Stannis, barely breathing, watched the strong hands running over the knotted muscles of the lower legs. Still laughing and casual as a peasant, Davos went to scrubbing his groin; Stannis’ hand dropped to his own, of its own accord, before he wrenched it away. Then the chest, armpits, neck … Stannis could almost taste that wet, hot skin and his mouth was too dry even to swallow. 

With his eyes half open he lost himself in a fantasy of bathing Davos, in the privacy of his own chambers; caressing Davos’ body, top to toe, gently and reverently like a woman and then surprising the smuggler — and himself — with a hard smack of his hand on the round buttock. How Davos would turn at that, teeth bared, and pull Stannis into the water with him. How the soap-slick skin would slide together, cocks and hands and maybe even mouths meeting. How the only fire would be in Davos’ eyes when Stannis laved his body with adoring tongue instead of dripping washrag. Stannis was too lost in a haze of lust to be disgusted at wanting to _serve_ this man, to anticipate and obey his every whim, to give him pleasure and, in so doing, take more pleasure than he had ever known, ever imagined. 

Davos had melted into the mass of men and was gone by the time Stannis roused himself from his reverie. The water had cooled, but Stannis’ arousal had not. He groped angrily for his breeches and climbed out of the pool in the darkness, still feeling the soft soap and the rough cloth, still seeing the smuggler’s silhouette against the fading fire.


	3. Rum

 

Not only onions had emerged from the hold of the smuggler’s ship. When the siege was broken, the casks of rum rolled out like a tapestry, finding their way into the great hall and thence into every sailor and soldier’s cup, there to be drunk down like the finest Arbor gold. 

Stannis sipped, once, when he was too slow to hold his hand over his cup as usual. He let it settle on his tongue, then spat it out. It tasted like the sole of a boot that had been in the streets.

“I wish we had something finer for you, m’lord,” the smuggler Davos had said, noticing Stannis’ revulsion. “We get used to this black tar rum at sea. Sometimes it tastes more familiar than clean water.”

“I don’t drink spirits,” Stannis said. “So anything finer would be wasted on me. I’d as soon give my portion away.”

Davos grinned over his shoulder. “Then if you come across any honey mead, or Dornish red, you know where to find me, Lord Stannis.”

Stannis watched him walk away to join another man at the long table. It was one of Ned Stark’s soldiers and as Stannis observed them lifting their rough stone cups in a genial toast he felt a stab of annoyance: _how did the smuggler make friends with that man and why?_ Despite himself he still felt toward Stark as an enemy, both because of Robert’s blatant desire to have Ned as a brother and not himself, and because Ned was, completely unfairly, getting all the praise for breaking the siege. It wasn’t Ned bloody Stark who saved them, Stannis raged inside himself, staring moodily into his half-empty glass of rum. It was Davos, who was half in his cups already judging by his easy, ringing laughter and the flush spreading across his brown face. Ned had not brought the onions and salt fish that saved the dying castle. Ned had not braved the blackest night. Ned had not stepped bravely into the starving garrison, facing his own possible death even as he brought life.

“It was Davos, and Robert and Ned Stark be damned,” Stannis thought, pushing his chair back with a loud scrape on the stone floor and stalking out. He could hear, or imagined he could hear, Davos’ voice following him down the dank corridor. _You know where to find me_.

Without really knowing how he got there, Stannis found himself on his hands and knees in the storeroom. The bones of dead rodents and the corpses of insects that blew apart into dust at the slightest movement greeted him. He paid the filth and detritus no mind, but surveyed the empty shelves at a glance before scrabbling in the dirt for the hinge to the trap door he had been hearing about since he was a boy and Robert was talking about the hidden cache of wine and hippocras and mead in the storeroom. If Robert had drunk it all up …

As Stannis ran his hands over the dirt, feeling for the latch or any raised metal in the griminess, he imagined Davos getting drunk on the syrupy, bitter rum in the great hall. Then stumbling down through the darkness, laughing and weaving, only to find Stannis waiting for him. Steady and hard Stannis would take his arms and arrest his wending way, and in the shadows Davos would not be able to see Stannis’ face, whether he was judging him or not.

“I was looking for you,” Davos would say, breath strangely sweet against the skin of Stannis’ neck, for how close they would be forced to stand in the cramped darkness. And “I was waiting for you,” Stannis would reply. 

And Stannis would have found the sought-for wine, the fine vintage of a peaceful time, and poured himself a glass, and Davos would watch greedily as he swallowed it down, his eyes tearing but his throat working, swallowing the last drops. Davos would lick his suddenly dry lips as Stannis’ vision swam before him, and Stannis would touch Davos’ mouth with his wine-wet finger … and the tip of the smuggler’s tongue would find it. The sweet tartness of the grape and the sting of the ferment would settle on both of them, Stannis now holding onto Davos to steady himself, to anchor himself against the sudden rocking of the floor. Davos’ wine-heavy breath would set Stannis’ tortured skin afire, and drunkenly they would fumble toward one another, sated but starving, loose-limbed and aching.

It was bare, Stannis realized with a painful jolt. While half-dreaming he had caught his hand on the rusted hinge; felt blindly for the latch, and yanked it open. He let his eyes adjust to the even deeper blackness of the cellar before feeling about gingerly; if there was a bottle or a living creature down there, it would not do to disturb it.

There was neither. The silence echoed off the walls of the storeroom, and Stannis’ stomach twisted in disappointment. Bitterness resettled in him like the miry aftertaste of the sailors’ rum. He would never be part of that world, but he could have offered the smuggler this — this one thing, something precious and rare and red as rubies. Instead, his cup would remain dry and empty.


	4. True Stories

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Stannis revisits some pages from lost tomes.

What was left of Storm’s End’s complement of servants was reduced to scrounging through once-commonplace items to find something to eat. The hollow-cheeked, hopeless cooks stumbled on an old, honorable Targaryen library. Before the young lord of the keep could consent or protest, they had torn the leaves of the books out with unseeing hands. The horse-glue bindings were boiling away in a pot over the naked flame of the ivory pages.

“Strength in there,” one cook said to Stannis, nodding at the foul brew. “Same as eating horsemeat, my lord, you’ll see.” 

It was vile, bitter and watery, tasting of acid. Stannis could not have said whether the horse-hooves that had long ago been cooked down to glue nourished him or sickened him, but he supposed he stayed alive. Perhaps he would have lived anyway.

Time was when the brothers and the happy parents gathered around the fire in Dragonstone, reading. Cassana and Steffon prided themselves on their books and on their sons’ ability to read. Both loved histories, though Steffon preferred chivalric flights of fancy; Cassana adored what she told Stannis as a child were “true stories” — things that had actually happened, knights and warriors who had lived and died. Robert hewed to his father’s books and called his mother’s tastes dull; Stannis promptly decided the other way, as a pendulum must eventually reverse its course. Little Renly only wanted fairy tales and myths, and these his brothers and parents fed him on. Stannis could almost laugh — now Renly was literally being fed on books. Gods and heroes, sad princesses and enchanted queens were become a white gruel that Renly sipped, spat out, then sipped again, his face hardened just a little under the suffering of it.

Stannis had stolen away a few of the pages — not the spines, where the horse had been — but the stories, the runny black ink smearing under his sweaty hands. It was his right as lord of Storm’s End, he reminded himself, yet he still felt he was taking something that did not belong to him. Nonetheless, the pages stuck to his thumb and forefinger until he secreted them under his thin mattress. He did not know why he did it; it was not as though he would live to read them again.

Then the smuggler came. Davos and his outrageous dare against the Redwyne fleet, and the little black ship, and the freedom from hunger and want. It was not comfortable. Stannis’ stomach burned from too many onions and his skin sweated from the oversalted fish, but he was no longer dying. His men were no longer chewing, like mice, the soles of their own shoes and the spines of his forefathers’ books. Davos — with his quiet calm, with his warm eyes, hardly like a smuggler at all — had done his work well.

In the late night after what had been the keep’s most lavish feast — a meal that even hedge knights or prisoners would laugh at — Stannis found himself prone on his bed, belly too full and mind dulled and wandering. He wanted some distraction, something to lift the dark air of the castle and the poison air of the uncertainty ahead. He wanted something to lighten his heart — as if he had ever thought of such a thing before. He thought of Cassana and her face warmed by firelight, and remembered the pages beneath the bed. If they had not been eaten by vermin they would still be there.

He remembered the voices of his family, murmuring together in the firelit study. Even Robert’s, deeper than their father’s, was usually so grating to Stannis, but it was less so in concert with their mother’s gentle tones. And Renly’s little voice that Stannis usually sought to quiet seemed somehow endearing as he begged his father for “one more story.” He wondered what his own voice had sounded like, reading aloud. He wondered what it would sound like now. If he were to fetch Renly to read to him ... but Renly was asleep, and if he were awakened indigestion would be his lot, if not worse. Better to sleep off the indulgence of the food that had been brought to them. 

Besides, it was not a child he wanted with him — not now. Stannis reached for the secret pages. They were still there, edges still sharp and ragged where he had torn them and scuttled away from the cookfire. The ink ran together, blurring some of the words, but he could read most of them as clear as ever in a maester’s neat and shaky hand:

_“Then rise again … as Lord of the Rainwood, Admiral of the Narrow Sea, and Hand of the King.”_

_“Your lords will not obey me.”_

_“Then we will make new lords.”_

As he read, he knew that as long as his eyes did not fail him, he would only desire to do this now in the company of the quiet smuggler, somewhere in a warm room far from the cold damp stone, with their voices rising and falling together as they told each other the timeless tales of heroes of old.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The "they had to eat books" idea was lifted from the show, but I thought it was a good one.


End file.
